Idea: Game Server Hosting
"I've always liked "___ hosting" as a business idea. I've often noticed that behind most popular open-source projects there's a multi-million-dollar business whose plan is simply to buy or rent some servers, host that open-source software, and offer a web-based control panel for the customer. Think Git, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL, ElasticSearch, and similar services. It's an easy idea to come up with, an easy product to build, and customers are easy to find, since you can just advertise wherever people gather to discuss open-source projects.
Sometimes the potential profit is huge. Companies whose business model is 'download Apache for free, set it up, and run it on commodity hardware' are now known as web hosting companies, and they're a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Game server hosting is much smaller. The total addressable market is maybe $50 million per year, but that niche size presents an opportunity. Since VCs will never fund a company with so little unicorn potential, and many potential founders would never bother starting one, the whole field has very few competitors — and many of them are less than competent.
My skills and experience are perfect for building a hosting company. I've been making web apps since middle school. My only non-self-employed job was the year I spent at Dreamhost right out of college (2009-2010). Because of that, and my own decade-plus of tinkering, I know a great deal about Linux servers and networks. I know how to get racks full of servers at below-market rates, how to manage those servers, and how to create a web app that the customer will use to control their game — a perfect combination!
My plan was always to expand to many different games, but starting with a single game made sense. It would let me test out the business model, iron out all the businessy stuff, and get some practice with promotion before I had to worry about answering support tickets for issues with dozens of games.
I chose to start with Ark: Survival Evolved because of how much growth potential I saw. Prior to launching, I researched the growth trends of a variety of games through SteamSpy and Google Trends, and Ark was the clear winner."